


Partners in Pranks

by jowritesthings



Series: Sanders Sides One-Shot Collection [6]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: (prolly a failed attempt tho let's be honest), Attempt at Humor, Bad Puns, Crack, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, Pranks and Practical Jokes, idk what else to tag, uhh, whatevs we'll just call that good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25376092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jowritesthings/pseuds/jowritesthings
Summary: “It’s just a prank,” Janus says as he makes a Valentine’s day card for Patton.“I’m trying to outdo him,” Janus says as he plans a fancy dinner for Patton.“I just want to beat him to it,” Janus says as he prepares to propose to Patton.*I own nothing. I am not in any way associated with Thomas Sanders or Sanders Sides. I merely wrote the plot and the story. Do not copy or repost to other websites or other places.
Relationships: Deceit | Janus Sanders/Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: Sanders Sides One-Shot Collection [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1760926
Comments: 28
Kudos: 123





	Partners in Pranks

**Author's Note:**

> I saw some ridiculous post on Tumblr and my dumbass Janus-loving brain went Moceit? Moceit. Enjoy the trash that distracted me from the LoSleep story I was supposed to put out today.
> 
> (Also, we’re just gonna pretend that the title is actually clever. It's supposed to be a play on 'partners in crime' and also alliteration so har-dee-har it's just so *funny* amirite)

Janus has a...prank war of sorts going on with Patton.

Like with many of the sides’ exploits, it starts simply and quite by accident, if Janus is to be honest with himself—but now, why would he do that?

Janus doesn’t fully intend to put jello in the showerhead before Patton showers—and for that matter, the culprit is actually Remus, and the intended victim Roman. But Patton is the one who comes stomping out of the bathroom and into the living room, green from head to toe and half-naked, and Janus is the one looking up from his book and trying not to laugh. And the lie that it was him slips off his tongue so naturally, just as so many others do.

And then Patton is staring at him, eyes alight with determination, declaring that oh, the competition is _on_ , and, well. Why ever not? It’s just a spot of friendly competition, and of course Janus will win. It gives him another chance to show off his innate superiority.

Obviously the glee that Janus takes in seeing Patton’s eyes glint like that is pure rivalry and competitiveness. Obviously.

Patton is the one to incite trouble next, replacing all of Janus’ skin moisturizer with mayonnaise. Janus scrubs the sticky sauce out of his scales in the bathtub, brow furrowed as he tries to figure out what to do to get Patton back.

The opportunity presents itself when Patton gets a new pair of glasses. He wakes up one morning to find them in the fridge, encased in the same green jello that started the whole mess in the first place. Not even a day after he got the new pair, he’s going back to Roman, asking the creative side to conjure him yet another pair.

Next up at bat is Patton, who sneaks into Janus’ room one night and places googly eyes on everything in his bedroom—furniture, pictures, paintings, stuffed animals, everything. Janus wakes up to find everything staring at him—including Patton, who hangs upside-down and red-faced from the canopy bed.

He totally doesn’t shriek. He _doesn’t_. No matter what Patton tries to tell anyone.

In retaliation for the googly eyes, Janus enlists Roman’s help (bribing him with pics of Virgil snuggling Mrs. Fluffybottom in his sleep), and the two conjure and hide dozens of tiny speakers all over Patton’s bedroom. He programs them to blast Never Gonna Give You Up three times a day at random and takes savage glee in the ultimate rickroll.

(Patton still hasn’t found all of the speakers to this day.)

Patton, ever the lover of puns, is the next to request Roman’s help. Patton announces that he’s Janus’ biggest fan, and Roman enchants dozens of fans with Patton’s face taped to them. They follow Janus around for a day and a half before he gets fed up and takes a hammer to them (after carefully removing and saving the pictures of Patton’s face first, of course).

In response, Janus installs a fake roll of toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom (leaving an actual roll of toilet paper nearby, of course, because for all that he loves causing chaos, he isn’t _that_ evil).

Patton simply puts pictures of Slash from Guns ’N Roses on Thomas’ tires, announcing that someone _slash_ ed Thomas’ tires the next time he and Janus are in the real world to “help” (translation: pester) Thomas.

Next Janus prints out a picture of a spider and hides it in the shade of the lamp on Patton’s bedside table.

That night a scream echoes through the entire mindscape, rousing even Thomas out in the real world, and bringing everyone running. And admittedly, Janus does feel bad about that one. He hadn’t realized Patton was _that_ scared of spiders.

So as an apology for the whole spider thing, Janus makes brownies for Patton. Correction—he makes brown Es. (Also real brownies, though he hides those in the fridge and doesn’t tell Patton they’re from him, because he really _does_ feel bad, but he’s not about to admit it.)

Patton uncovers the tray and sees the brown Es, and the watery smile he gives Janus makes the deceitful side’s stomach twist delightfully.

(It’s just the spirit of the game, he tells himself. He’s just relieved that he hasn’t lost a fellow prankster and causer of chaos.)

Janus knows all is forgiven when Patton brings him a bag of his favorite fast food back from the real world—and Janus opens it to find cucumbers where chicken nuggets should be, and carrot sticks in the fries container.

(After five minutes of laughing at Janus’ disappointed face, Patton brings out the actual chicken nuggets and fries for him, and hey, maybe Patton isn’t so bad after all. ...Just, not as cool as Janus. Duh.)

And the game is afoot once more.

Patton taste-tests a batch of cookies one day to find that Janus switched the sugar with the salt.

Janus spends a day wondering why everyone sounds like they’re hissing instead of speaking before he realizes that Patton bribed the others into helping him (even Thomas, how could he?!).

The googly eyes make their way out of Janus’ room and find their way into the fridge. In the process the dozen eggs are all given names, personalities, and backstories, and Patton is too distraught to cook with them.

The prank war is put on hold for a day or two when Remus hatches the eggs into zombie chickens, and all hands are needed on deck to round up the things so Roman can release them in the Imagination. But once the last of the sickly green little puffballs is vanished, the game continues on.

Stealing—ahem, _borrowing_ —some of Virgil’s nail polish, Janus puts clear polish on the soap in all of the bathrooms. This leaves Patton wondering why the soap won’t lather up when he goes to wash his hands.

Patton tapes tiny harmonicas to the bottom of the vacuum, resulting in Janus puzzling over the sounds of hell opening whenever he tries to vacuum his bedroom.

For two days straight everything in the living room of the Mindscape is covered in tinfoil until Roman, exasperated and seeing that neither Janus nor Patton intend to undo it all, snaps it away himself. Then Virgil is left to dispose of all of the Janus-shaped balloons that mysteriously fill the hallway one morning (popping them violently with scissors counts as anger management, he insists).

Janus causes everyone to question their sanity as he goes about the day seemingly as normal, quietly replacing his bowler hat with identical hats that are just a bit tinier at periodic intervals throughout the day.

Patton and Logan switch places for a day, but Janus is the only one who seems to catch the change, ironically enough. He’s all too familiar with Patton’s laugh and his smile at this point—on account of them constantly pranking each other, of course, not because he stares at those pictures of Patton every night before he goes to bed or anything—so of course Janus knows the difference between the two.

Whoopee cushions are overrated, so instead Janus tapes an air horn underneath Patton’s desk chair. He hides in Patton’s closet and makes sure to film this one, editing the video of Patton jumping into the opening of Let’s Get It On in the spirit of Thomas’ Vine days.

Eventually the other sides make Thomas step in and tell them to stop, because Patton accidentally replaced Remus’ deodorant with cream cheese instead of Janus’, and Logan is still picking glitter out of his clothes. The two rivals stare at each other contemplatively from across the living room. Janus wonders how he might be able to continue this contest of sorts.

And then, oh, _then_. Then the most marvelous, wonderful, amazing, beautiful, stupendous idea hits him.

Why not turn it into a battle of wits? A battle of words, of puns, of—of _flirting_.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Janus will beat the moral side at his own game—in matters of the heart, in matters of wordplay.

The flurry in which Janus takes to wooing Patton—still just in the spirit of a little friendly competition, naturally—leaves Patton blushing and the other sides very much regretting making him stop with the pranks.

“It’s just a joke,” Janus says as he takes Patton’s hand in his and kisses it.

“I’m trying to outdo him,” Janus asserts as he bakes heart-shaped cookies for Patton.

“It’s all in good fun,” Janus claims as he looks up puns and innuendos to make Patton blush.

“I’m trying to beat him at his own game,” Janus insists as he makes Patton a Valentine’s Day card.

And then—

“Date me,” Patton breathes, staring into Janus’ wide eyes, and he’s _certain_ Patton is just trying to one-up him again, but dammit! Janus is trapped, _trapped_. Either he chickens out and says no, and then Patton wins, or he says yes, and what then? How can he possibly outdo that?

For the time being he settles with challenging Patton to a nonverbal battle—that of kissing—and naturally he wins, because Janus is hands down the best wooer ever to woo.

So after saying a firm yes to Patton’s question, Janus darts forward, pressing a kiss to Patton’s lips and winding his arms around the other side. Ha- _ha_! This will do it! This will truly prove that he is the best! This is the one.

Or, well, maybe another. Not because he _likes_ kissing Patton, it’s just because, because his breathing was a little off that time, he can do better next time, prove to Patton that he’s the best kisser of the two of them. And then uhh, maybe another one, because third time’s the charm, right?

But as the two throw date after extravagant date, the question lurks in the back of Janus’ mind—how can he possibly outdo Patton’s “date me”?

Two years later, Janus finds the answer in the “marry me” he says to a starstruck, swooning Patton, and _ha_. Bet Patton didn’t see that one coming. He even had Roman design the most perfectest ring to fit Patton’s personality and clothing style, all in the name of overdoing it and making it nigh-on impossible for Patton to even try to outdo Janus’ extreme extra-ness.

And as they are planning the wedding and Janus pulls out the binders he has noting every last detail (yes, binders, plural), he wears a proud grin. He’d love to see Patton try and top _that_. Because of course he’s been planning the wedding ceremony for months now—erm, only so Patton won’t be able to outplan and outfox him on that front, of course.

Yes, yes, that’s the most important part. Patton will never be able to beat Janus _now_. It has nothing to do with the way Patton’s eyes light up and he leans in close to peer over Janus’ shoulder to look at the designs.

And then the day of the wedding comes, and sure, it’s a little ridiculous, because the whole thing is really only them, with Remus as their flower girl and Logan officiating and Virgil and Roman as the best men, and Thomas—poor confused Thomas, sitting alone in the pews in an Imagined church, wondering how it’s even possible for two figments of his imagination to get married in the first place.

Janus makes sure that his vows are the longest and the best and the prettiest, not to make Patton cry or love him even more or anything, just to show he’s the best with words. He even throws in a pun or two to remind Patton that he’s the best at making puns, too. Naturally he’s an excellent dancer, too, so with him leading, he and Patton dominate the dance floor after the ceremony as well.

(And then their wedding night comes and, well. Maybe Janus can’t top Patton in quite _every_ way. Ahem. But that’s a different story.)

Anniversary after anniversary comes and goes (and with them, celebration after increasingly elaborate celebration), and still Janus and Patton are married, to Logan and Virgil’s utmost confusion. It’s like a game of chicken, Janus assures himself. He simply doesn’t want to be the one to back out first, and Patton is more stubborn than he seems.

But, as he lies in bed with Patton, determined to prove that he’s the best cuddler, Janus thinks that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t mind all that much.

Patton isn’t entirely sure why his husband of ten years breaks into random maniacal laughter on occasion, or why he’s so competitive in everything he does. But Patton takes it in stride, with a smile on his face. It’s quite endearing, really. Let the man have his quirks.

**Author's Note:**

> I. I don’t even know, man. It ain’t my greatest fic but looking up stupid pranks was fun, so hey! I learned something, you learned something. April Fool’s gonna be lit next year.
> 
> Come screech at me in the comments or on [Tumblr](https://jowritesthingss.tumblr.com/) or [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/jowritesthings/) or my dead [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jowritesthings/) or wherever you’d like! Just preferably don’t track me down and screech at me in person, I have social anxiety and I will cry.


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